Prisoner
by Cis100
Summary: Darth Revan wasn't sure how he ended up in this predicament, perhaps it was the arrogance gifted to him by stopping his apprentice's betrayal before it could begin? Or perhaps it was being so sure that he could not be defeated by a group of Jedi Padawans. For all intents and purposes, there were worse things than being imprisoned on Dantooine. Eventual LSM Revan/Bastila; Heavy AU.
1. Chapter 1

**AN: This plot bunny attacked me in my sleep and I couldn't help but put it into words. I was hesitant at first to post this because of the dozens of redemption stores - so I went out of my way to try and make this one different. Make no mistake, this is a redemption story, but it takes the long way around. I hope that you'll stick around to read it, please tell me what you think! **

**Chapter 1**

* * *

The battle was at a fevered pitch.

Through the endless eddies and currents of the Force, I could feel lives winking out of existence and the mesmerizing ocean of fear, triumph and concentration and it was all so very delicious. And as the seconds stretched into minutes, I found my eyes drifting over to the Leviathan and I didn't need a mirror to know that the grin that was stretching out over my lips was devious. Did the fool honestly think I wouldn't know about it? Did he not even consider the possibility that I could see it in his mind? Malak and I had known each other since before we could walk, I had always been able to read him and he never knew it. And then the grin fell from my face as I felt the Jedi and the Republic Soliders enter the periphery of my awareness in the Force, this needed to be ended quickly. Turning to one of the crew pit officers and giving him a sharp nod, I returned my attention to his ship. It was the coward's way of dealing with him, I would admit that, but I did not have the time or the patience to deal with Malak in a duel or through slimy games of politics.

It was more prudent to pull the rug out from under him and deliver the killing blow, and as that crew pit officer began to count down, I held my breath. As the countdown entered its last five seconds, I closed my eyes and took a deep breath in. I would never admit that I was holding a silent and begrudging requiem for the only person that I could ever call my best friend – and as the countdown stopped and I slowly felt nearly nine thousand lives being torn from the force, I had to admit that Malak had died years ago. _Darth _Malak however had become a tempestuous, arrogant, impatient and rash fool that no longer served a purpose and who had become more of a liability then an asset. His death was of no consequence to me and if my ability to see into the future was correct, his death was beneficial. The future was always in motion, but if the vision that ultimately to me going through with my decision was correct, he would have no issue with killing me either or better yet doing it from afar either. Turnabout had continued to always be fair play between the two of us – but Malak was dead now and none of that mattered anymore. It was time for me to begin anew with a new ball of clay, but first, first I would deal with my enemies before finding an adequate new student.

"Was Admiral Karath extracted from the Leviathan as I instructed?" I turned and asked my bridge commander, Admiral Varrow. The middle aged human male was not inept in his assignment, but I didn't want him here. Saul Karath for all of his shortcomings was a brilliant tactician and someone wasted in Malak's service as far as I was concerned. I had taken great pains to make sure that my agents were not detected when they boarded Malak's vessel, drugged Karath and brought him here.

Admiral Varrow ran a hand through his graying hair and nodded – I could see that was fearful and he was practically shouting the question at me mentally. He was simply going to be transferred to another ship, not killed, but I'd let him stew in the possibility of being killed. His fear was quite wonderful, "Yes Lord Revan, our agents did have to kill two junior aides to the Admiral, but he was successful extracted."

"And what of the strike team that the Jedi sent?" I asked, not taking my sight off of the viewport and the raging battle below. There was something about this battle and the events that had taken place that made me uneasy. Not uneasy in a bad way, but the Dark Side was whispering to me in my ear that the Force had moved into another direction and events had just transpired that would secure my victory.

Malak was dead, there was no one who was capable of dethroning me, the Republic was on the run and the Core was in reach. The Star Force was working at capacity and millions of Republic soldiers and citizens defected to my empire every day. I would soon begin the plan to launch an invasion of the core, but first the mid-rim needed to be conquered completely and pacified. And when I felt the tug of the Jedi on my ship, I knew that this was another hurdle that needed to be overcome. I took my eyes off of the battle and peered at the Admiral through my mask, watching him as he received a report from one of his aides. When the aide hurriedly whispered something into the Admiral's ear, I felt a sharp spike of ear from him and I knew that it was not good news. I smiled wickedly as he turned back to me and swallowed thickly in fear, "My Lord, the Jedi have penetrated the command deck."

I turned my eyes back to the viewport and tied my hands behind my back, "Alert my elite guard, order them to the bridge and begin to evacuate your crew to the auxiliary bridge. And once the Dark Jedi have arrived on the bridge, I want you to instruct security throughout this deck to allow the Jedi to pass unobstructed to the bridge. I would like to see the faces of the Jedi foolhardy enough to attempt this."

"My lord is that wise? With Lord Malak dead, you are running the risk of the Jedi taking your life and the Empire would be left leaderless-…" I understood his reasoning, it was not entirely misplaced and that was the only reason that I was allowing his questioning of my orders to pass unpunished. Raising a hand to stop his words, he shut his mouth instantaneously while I chose my response carefully.

"It matters not, I am fully capable of defending myself against the Jedi," I waved his concern off and folded my arms over my chest. "What you need to do is to make sure that my orders are carried out and that command function is transferred there. I will meet the Jedi here and I will dispose of them quite easily, do not fear."

I was not concerned with the safety of the bridge crew, in fact I could care less, but in the event that I was proven wrong and these Jedi were lucky enough to kill me or even wound me – they could not be allowed to gain control of this ship. As my personal flag ship, it contained access to most command codes, strategies and endless amounts of valuable data that could destroy all that I had built. I was thoroughly sure that I was being paranoid, but it was better to be paranoid then to be dead and take everything down with me. The sound of bridge door opening and the feel of the Dark Jedi drew my attention back towards the entrance – and I knew that I was sending these men to their deaths. That, again, did not matter – they would be useful tools to gage the strength of my would-be assassins. I would wait until the Jedi slew all of them to engage them directly. I walked close enough to them as the leader of my personal unit of Dark Jedi stood at attention with his seven subordinates behind him. The Jedi would prove more than a match for them.

The dark robbed man bowed at the waist, "You summoned us Master?"

I nodded, my hands clasped behind my back, "Indeed – surely you have felt the presences of the Jedi that have boarded this ship? I have no doubt that they have attempted to do so in order to kill me – consequently, I have a task for your team."

"We are at your command," He bowed again, and I took a moment to look at all of their faces and I realized that they were hanging on my every word. Thanks to my mask, I was free to roll my eyes and reaffirm my belief that they were useful tools.

* * *

It was fairly simple to know where he was.

Anyone with a rudimentary knowledge on how to use the Force could feel him. Revan was on the bridge, a dark, pulsing nexus of power and as I sliced through the torso of yet another Dark Jedi, I reached out and touched him in the Force. He was gathering his strength with alarming intensity and when I felt a slight sense of surprise from him when he felt my presence, it was replaced with bemusement. Scowling intensely at the mocking attitude in the Force, I deflected blaster blots from the squad of Sith Troopers quickly approaching our position and closed my mind off. But I was not quick enough and I was thankful that I had the foresight to take some form of cover before the Dark Lord of the Sith invaded my mind. And when his deep, rich and strangely warm voice came through my mind, I could feel nothing but utter shock.

I had expected someone else entirely – someone whose very voice reeked of the Dark Side of the Force, but it was not the case with Darth Revan. Perhaps I should have listened to Master Zhar, perhaps I should not have built the sickly, demented picture of Darth Revan until I had actually met him. He was proving to be strange.

"_You are a strange one little Jedi,"_ He chuckled with dark amusement. "_You radiate pure power, enough that you can withstand my very presence – that is impressive enough. Perhaps I shall keep you when this is through – you have earned that…" _

And I gasped as I could almost feel the tendrils of his presence reach further and further into my mind, and then his voice was back. What he told me next sent a shiver of fear down to my very core, "_Ah_ _yes… I will most definitely keep you…"_

* * *

I had heard rumors of the Padawan Bastila Shan's power of Battle Meditation and how the Republic and the Jedi were using her power to keep me out of the core worlds. What I did not expect was for the Jedi to be foolish enough to deliver her to me – right to my feet. The girl was very powerful and because of that I could almost see the logic in sending her, _almost_ anyway. What she lacked was drive, what she lacked was will and because of that – all of that power was no threat to me directly. She was simply a foolhardy child who simply had the misfortune of having the masters fill her head with delusions of grandeur. Perhaps the Force had willed that we would meet, perhaps it was simply luck, but I knew that I would never know why the Jedi were foolish enough to think that this girl could kill me. I had not fought all of my life, learned all that I had learned, sacrificed so much and lived through all of it to be taken down by a Jedi Padawan who was willingly playing pawn to the Republic. I would teach her the grievous error of her misguided ways.

My eyes snapped open when I heard the blast door to the bridge forced open, and I unconsciously rested my hand on the hilt of my lightsaber. They had arrived at the bridge quicker than I had anticipated, but that was no matter – my full strength was gathered and I was more the ready to take on five Jedi Padawans. Turning, I watched as the Jedi battled three of my remaining Dark Jedi and it was at this point that activated my weapon and watched. To leader – Bastila Shan I assumed – to put it mildly, was breathtaking – the gray eyes, the beautiful hair, the fierce look of determination, I might have been distracted if I were not so painfully aware that she was here to kill me. And before I knew it, two of the Dark Jedi were down, dead and it was simply Bastila and my last line of defense battling it out to until death.

Quickly deflecting the blaster-fire that the foolish Republic Solider aimed at me, I grasped his throat in the Force and began to squeeze very slowly, extracting every last delicious scintilla of fear and panic from him. The solider and my servant died almost simultaneously and when both bodies collapsed to the floor, I brought my lightsaber up into a defensive posture. My style of fighting had changed over the years and they had most definitely been instructed by my older master, Master Zhar and he would have trained them in my old style. I would attack first, almost blindly, that's how much time had passed since he taught me how to fight. But now, now I would not make a move until they did and that left room for them to make a mistake. But the boldness of these Jedi, particularly Bastila, surprised me.

"You cannot win Revan!" Her crisp accent was very refreshing, it was lovely.

"If you are so sure of yourselves," I practically purred back - the potential that she radiated was intoxicating and I would not be shy about it. I wondered if she had told her companions about our _interaction_. "Then I suggest you make your move."

They moved like anxious animals and I was very impressed to see that Padawan Shan was simply holding back and observing my clashing with her companions. It made an involuntary smile come across my face and I made a silent note in the back of mind to not underestimate her. But what drew the genuine smile to my face was when I used the Force to summon my offhand lightsaber that was strapped to my arm into my hand and drive it right into the surprised Jedi's torso. Pulling it out swiftly, I decided to give the Jedi a small bit of mercy for his boldness and brought my main weapon up to sever his head from his body. Spinning back around to face the two remaining Jedi that were attacking me, I angled myself so that I would not be taken surmise by Bastila if she decided to join the battle and pressed my lead.

Driving my two opponents back towards one of the command pits, I became keenly aware of the fact that Bastila was now… she was now using her power on her companions. Sparing a glance back towards the girl, my breath caught as I witnessed her on her knees, and through the Force, a swirling and pungent aroma surrounded her. Glaring silent daggers at her, I sent a powerful shove through the Force at my opponents and then sent powerful arc off lighting at Bastila. I was quite confident that I could defeat the Jedi with or without the girl's "gift" – but it would make it difficult and I had no time to waste here. When I heard Bastila's scream of utter pain and her subsequent fall out of the meditative trance, I turned my attention back to the two Jedi fools that I suddenly no longer had patience for.

Reaching out to the Force, I exerted my full strength and overwhelmed the girl, ripping the lightsaber from her hand and forcing her to her knees. With one clean sweep of my lightsaber, her head fell free from her body and she collapsed to the ground, most certainly dead. I did not get to where I was by luck of the draw, I had fought all of the ground that it took to get here and neither these Jedi or Battle Meditation would be able to stop me from achieving my admittedly lofty goals.

But in turning my back on Bastila, I might have made my biggest mistake of the day by forgetting my promise to myself to underestimate her. I suppose I had blinded myself to her in my predatory and very slow advance on the second fallen Jedi. I did not see Bastila slowly and yet silently force her body up, I did not hear her make her way behind me and I most definitely did not anticipate the crack of a very hard lightsaber against the un-guarded back of my head. And as the pain set it and I dropped my lightsabers, the only thoughts and feelings that I felt as I drifted into blackness and hit the cool, hard deck was a begrudging, but strong respect for her. There were not many people alive with the tenacity – or ability for that matter – that could sneak up on me like that and completely disarm me. When I closed my eyes, I was felt a profound sense of relief that I had evacuated the bridge crew and closed off all functions to the secure auxiliary bridge. Admirals Varrow and Karath could administrate things in a competent way until I broke free of the chains that the Jedi and the Republic would undoubtedly put me in, they would be just fine.

Still, I couldn't help but feel impressed and very angry by and with Bastila Shan.

"_I will never underestimate her or turn my back on her ever again."_

* * *

I couldn't believe the turn of these events, and even as Serena and I managed to drag Revan's unconscious body back to the escape pods – it still was shocking. I had captured Darth Revan, Darth Malak was dead and the Sith Fleet was very close to being routed from the Mid-Rim all together. Thank the Force! Just the enormity of the consequences of this day made my eyes water. It was against the Jedi way to show emotions such as the one I was feeling at the moment, but damn it I was tired of war and the prospect of it ending made me feel positively giddy. It even overshadowed the grief that I felt by the awful deaths of my friends who had trained on this mission with me. Darth Revan's incapacitation and Darth Malak's death seemed worth it to me, now it was in the Jedi Council's hands on what to do.

Sliding Revan's body into the seat between the two of us, I buckled him in and reached up to press the airlock button and then slapped the eject button. If Admiral Dodonna and Master Vandar did their part, they would be waiting to intercept this escape pod and take us to safety. Now there was nothing more to do but wait. That was until I felt Serena's eyes burning into the side of my head and I spared her a speculative look, "I know that this is surprising, but think about it! We have him!"

"He butchered them Bastila, you saw it and you did nothing!" Serena spat back.

"I did! I just wasn't quick enough!" I replied rather loudly, far louder than I'd like.

Serena sighed heavily and shook her head before turning her attention back to Revan who now sat with his head slumped against my shoulder. I could tell what she wanted me to do and I was silently debating if it was wise, "I want to see him!"

I remained silently, looking at the heavily armored and robed figure and when I reached out in the Force and touched him, I conceded that it wasn't such a bad thing to do. With a deep breath, I propped him up in the seat, lowered his hood and reached around to the back his head to take off the infamous mask. When I looked at his face, I actually dropped the mask in shock at his face and I heard Serena let out her own gasp. I had not expected Revan to look like this, not from the horror stories of his legendary ability for cruelty. He looked young and yet old at the same time with a clean shaven face, boyish features and the scars he bore. His lips were so obviously made for smirking as I would have expected from him, and it was then that I realized that they all coalesced to make a very handsome face. But I would never admit that to Serena or anyone else, only the blush that came to my face betrayed anything and I doubted she could see it. Sighing, I clamped down on the thoughts and tried to take in the obvious signs of Dark Side taint to quell them.

"He's… he's not what I expected," Serena finally spoke first.

I nodded, "It is surprising."

I couldn't shake the feeling that my life had just taken a sharp right turn.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

**Darth Revan's Point of View**

* * *

I could not be contained by binders and a neural disruptor – I had long developed ways of deactivating the pitiful means of containment with my mind alone and it was amusing to me that they thought that they could. But ultimately it would serve no at this point purpose to escape – I was deep inside Republic Space and several days away from the nearest friendly ship. In fact, if my guards were telling the truth, I was less than a few hours from Dantooine. Apparently I had been unconscious for two days with the combined influence of several sedatives, the neural disruptor and the Force itself. From what the doctor who was observing me told the guards, I had attempted to wake up several times and that was what motivated them to put me under for the journey into their territory. The fools evidently did not notice that I had broken through most of it and was now keenly awake and aware of my surroundings. Now I was debating on what I could do – with an exertion of my will, I could break the neural disruptor and the binders around my arms, hands, legs and feet. When the neural disruptor was off of me, I could kill the five guards outside of my shielded cell, crush the generators and find my way off of his ship. But then, then I remembered something about my position.

The Jedi might have been fools, but they were not stupid – and yes there was an enormous difference. A stupid group of people might not have even bothered to put binders and a disruptor on me, believing that the shield around my cell could not be broken through. The Jedi knew that the disruptor around my neck made the difference between my pacification and my takeover of this ship and murder of all onboard and they knew I was more than capable of escaping, they just hoped that I wouldn't be able to do so. These Republic fools probably thought that with all of their drugs and technology that I was not capable of even moving and I had to physically fight down the urge to show them the error of their ways. Instead, I looked around what presumably was the brig of the ship that I was on and discovered that I was more heavily guarded then I anticipated. I could probably kill all of the men barehanded and still live, but by the time that I moved on to the droids and the turrets that were locked onto me, they'd fire the killing shot at me.

"Oh, his lordship is up," One of the men drawled arrogantly in front of me and I turned my attention back to them and focused my eyes on the speaker. He was a young man, in fact I could almost assume that he was a teenager and considering the Republic's manpower problem at the moment, I wouldn't have been surprised. Messy blonde hair, a cocky smirk, he was riding high on his victory over me and he was barely hiding it at all from either me or his friends. "Are you comfy my _lord_?"

I could actually feel my left eye twitch with annoyance at the mocking, biting tone in his voice and I had to control myself. I couldn't spring myself out of prison just yet – I had to get off of this ship and preferably out of space. Dantooine was a big and empty place, I still had friends there from when I was a child and I knew the enclave there like the back of my hand. Yes…that's how I'd do it, I'd wait until the Jedi were confident that they had pacified me and when I was safely off of this ship.

Smiling at the man, I felt my fingers flex involuntarily, "Didn't your parents ever teach you not to throw food at the zoo animals? You could get quite hurt, _child_…"

I relished the flare that engulfed the boy's cheeks as my own barb hit home, and really, he should know better than to mock me. Yes, they had their victory, but it was a temporary one – they did capture me, but they hadn't secured me in a cell and made sure I couldn't hurt anyone. That victory might have lasted quite a bit longer, but no, what they had done was effectively back me into a corner and I was known to always win when that happened. My mind raced at light years per second, my instincts and tactical skills worked into overdrive, and I fought with no hesitation – I was transformed into something else when I felt like I needed to get out a bad situation. This little fool was lucky that it was too early for my escape because if it hadn't been, I would have taken pleasure in crushing his bare neck. I simply smirked and looked down to the bulkhead as the boy cocked his rifle and I heard the power function come on with a high pitched noise, "I really want to do it."

"What makes you think that you even could?" I looked back up to him and smiled inquisitively, cocking my head. "You know that even if you did survive the methods that I would take to defend myself, you would probably come out of them fairly damaged and if I'm not mistaken, I'm fairly sure that the Republic would not be happy if I had an accident. After all, I am their ultimate key for them defeating-…"

The boy pulled his rifle back and glared nails into me, "You overestimate yo-…"

"Alright then," I interrupted him, an idea forming in my head – this fool was proving to be more useful than I had thought, he would draw my captors to me. In fact I wanted his anger to draw one in particular to me – I wanted to see her wretchedly pretty face. The Jedi girl would suffer unimaginable pain and suffering from me in the end, but only when I was utterly done with her. "Kill me, put a blaster bolt right through my forehead, I have committed so many crimes and caused the death of so many beings that I am quite sure you'd be called a hero."

I smiled inwardly as his companions did nothing to stop the foolish boy from lowering the shield around my cell – nor did they stop him from coming into my cell with me and I wanted to scoff. Who trained this boy? Did his instructor tell him that it was the greatest idea to step into a cell with the Dark Lord of the Sith himself? Did he really think that I couldn't kill him in my current state? Did he think that the damned blaster rifle could stop me? He was very stupid, "Yes… you want to do it."

I had already overwhelmed the neural disruptor to the point where I could feel the Force minutely, but that was more than enough as he approached me. I felt the brush of the Force against my mind as I grasped at one of the few straws that I could feel – and when I established my mental control over it, I grasped the boy in the Force. The Jedi did not practice this and I did not teach my Dark Jedi this ability, so it should not have been such a surprise when they all looked shocked at their immobilized companion. Using the Force, I mentally ripped the rifle from his hands and turned around to face his gaping companions, "Summon Bastila Shan now! Or I will break every single bone in his body _simultaneousl_y, he will die quickly, but the last feeling that he will ever feel will be a most unimaginable pain."

"Do it!" The boy choked out over my invisible grip on his throat.

"Yes," I agreed, nodding with a smug smile and then I used the Force to touch their unguarded and soft minds, forcing the suggestion in them. Akin to a Jedi mind trick and based on the same concept, this trick was a little bit more forceful. "And you will not alert the Jedi to this development and after you have communicated with her, you will forget that this ever happened. You will not remember what I have done to you – and you will never speak to anyone about the events in this room."

All five of them nodded and I smiled as one of them walked over to the communicator on the wall and presumably followed my instructions to the letter. If my mind control technique worked, then once they called her, they would return to what they were doing before they discovered that I was awake and it would be as if none of this had ever happened. When the solider at the communication station turned around, I released the boy from my grasp in the Force and gave him a not so gentle telekinetic shove out of the cell. I made a mental note to come back and kill this child in the end – I did not appreciate being mocked, let alone by them.

I watched as the boy reset the shield over my cell with the look of a blank automaton on his face and when I sat back and relaxed as best as I could, trying to dampen and hide myself in the Force. I couldn't afford for the Republic, let alone the Jedi to know that I had managed to reestablished my control over the Force while still wearing the collar. The Republic would no doubt beg the Council for my almost immediate execution and the Jedi Council would likely inevitably try to use their combined power to cut me off from the Force itself. No, I had to appear vulnerable until the time was right and with that thought, I closed my eyes to calm myself for my coming conversation with my abductor. I genuinely wished to have a simple conversation with her and I wanted to learn if her actions aboard my ship were pure luck or was she viable as an opponent? I had a hunch that our fates were intertwined the moment she was selected to lead the attack on me and if that were true, it was good to learn all that I could about her while I was in this situation.

'_Besides_,' I observed dryly, '_It's not like I can do anything else_.'

* * *

The heat of battle did many things and sure I had seen her face long enough to observe that she was pretty, but now when it was just the two of us, I could see that she was strikingly beautiful. But it was the eyes that really burned themselves into my mind, they were unfathomably gray and… I was surprised when the errant thought that I could get lost in them appeared in my head. With the exception of her physical beauty and the gift granted to her by the Force, she struck me was unimpressive to say the least. I did not need to see her through the Force to know that she was a conflicted individual in which the Jedi teachings had not settled into her mind easily. She probably had to recite the code with every single stressful situation and I knew that when I was free from my bonds and back in my empire, it would not take a lot of pressure to make her see things my way – it would be easy.

"Tell me Padawan – did you happen take my lightsabers with you when you took me from my ship? I would hate to think of them as being lost," I asked her lightly starting out with something that was not so aggressive, I had to lure her in, "I have had those lightsabers since I was a Padawan, imagine how you'd feel if you lost-…"

She held her hand up to silence me, "I have your lightsabers, however I regret to inform you that you will never see them again – you will spend the rest of your days on Dantooine and for where you are allowed to be, you will not need them."

"That remains to be seen my dear," I smirked darkly at her.

I could practically feel her flare up in the Force when she glared murderous daggers at me, "You will refer to me as Padawan, just as I will refer to you as Darth Revan."

"I would prefer that you refer to me as Master," I quipped with a smile, ignoring her deepening glare, "But that is something that we can work on later – for now you will tell me on how you intend on keeping me on Dantooine, will you keep me in a cage for the rest of my life? I can assure you that it will not stop this war, at all."

That was the most amusing thought that I had when I was pondering their motives for capturing me after I killed Malak. They believed without my leadership or Malak's, my empire would collapse into anarchy and disintegrate without so much as a Republic life lost. But in their arrogance and ignorance they did not even so much as suspect that I had another card to play to keep the leadership alive until I could return. They never suspected that deep within the core of Malachor V, I kept a highly trained army of assassins that I could summon to any place in the Galaxy and they didn't know that the woman I placed in charge of the academy, my first Master, Darth Traya – could handle things until I could return. In fact, if things did get to chaotic and the Admiralty could not keep control of things, I knew that Traya would step in to stabilize things because ultimately our goals were very similar.

Yes, things would be fine in the empire until I returned.

The girl's eyes narrowed at my silence, "What do you mean?"

"I'll make it easy for you Jedi," I said, looking her directly in the eye. "There is only one way to silence me completely – just one, and it is the one thing that you will not allow. You think cutting me off from the Force is my fear? No my dear, there are ways to reestablish contact with it. Wipe my mind, reprogram me? The galaxy is crawling with my servants and interaction with one will undo all of that work."

I leaned forward, "I will get out of here eventually, one day – you will slip, and all it will take is five minutes at a holocom station for your fate to be sealed. There is only one way to make sure that none of this comes to pass and that is to kill me."

Even if she did give in, which I suspected that she wouldn't at this point, I was more than capable of stopping her. The point of my manipulation wasn't to get her to kill me, it was to break her resolve, it was to make her want and act on it and not resist. Judging by the expression on her face, I saw that she was torn – and that was a good thing. The seed had been planted at least and corruption was a slow thing but when the seed was planted, it took exceptionally strong willpower to resist it. The girl's weakness was indeed the only thing that could save her future.

She didn't know it of course, she was too young and too idealistic – but because she had to actually think about it – she was already in my grasp and that's what mattered. Perhaps she would talk to one of the masters and they would see my designs – but even then, it would be too late, she had thought about killing me just to kill me, given it serious thought. But then she did something that I did not expect and I knew that I had miscalculated, however marginally, it still was a mistake that would cost me ground. She put her hands on her hips and glared down at me, almost baring her teeth, "I know what you are trying to do – you want me to entertain thoughts of killing you, and while I confess that I would gain no greater joy, it is not the Jedi way. I will not succumb to your awful manipulations."

"You surprise me," I complimented her and it was genuine, but then I placed my smirk back on my face, "But remember one of the fundamentals of your basic training my young, foolish soon to-be apprentice – the future is always in motion."

I grinned as her face paled and as I expected she soon recovered and turned around to leave the room with a huff and left me alone to my thoughts. This time on Dantooine would be inconsequential to say the least, it might have an effect on my nerves, seeing Master Vrook tended to do that, but it wouldn't change me. So I resigned myself to begin making my plans for when I returned to the empire – and I suspected that I would have to dismantle the leadership of several places that Malak had the most influence in, including the leadership of the Academy on Korriban, on third of the Admiralty Corp and maybe a third of the Dark Jedi for that matter. There was no way that Malak would be foolhardy enough to attempt something like he was if he didn't have at least some support from the Force blind servants and those in touch with the Dark Side of the Force. I was tempted to make that call to Malachor and unleash the horde upon the enemies from within, a horde that they had no chance of stopping, but I knew that I would have to do it myself.

And then there was the matter of Darth Traya's new apprentices – the man who looked as if he had stabbed himself with Vibroblades for fun and the one that Malak had almost affectionately labeled as a ghost. I could handle the one that called himself Darth Sion, there were a multitude of different ways of killing someone who "could not die" and I had a wild imagination when it came to such things. He could rise a hundred times after being struck down all that he wanted too, and he could keep himself alive with the sheer power of his rage all that he wanted too – but it was tough to seek revenge when you're fired into a star out of a missile shell. The other, the other would be difficult, but my old Master appeared to be keeping them in line and that was all that mattered for now. They would never know that I would be watching them for the slightest misstep and if they stepped out of line even once – I would show them the true power of the Dark Side of the Force from its master.

* * *

I was so bored by this planet as a child.

From the moment Darth Traya, who was known as Kreia at the time, taught me to feel the utter power of the life ebbing off of this planet to the last night I ever spent here, it had bored me terribly. I thought that it had no redeeming qualities whatsoever and that it was in fact the perfect place for a Jedi Enclave. But now, as I discreetly tried to get a feel for the planet as the shuttle descended from the Republic Warship, there was an undercurrent of fear, tension and… excitement from the inhabitants. It had brought a smile to my face and a small flicker of hope within it – perhaps Dantooine would not be boring after all. Maybe it would be even more interesting by the fact Padawan Shan had not stopped looking at me since she and her companion Jedi had come to retrieve me from my cell. That fact made my smile grow larger, perhaps the girl wasn't as brain dead as she appeared to be and perhaps she had more independence then I suspected initially, I had hoped so. I finally turned and locked eyes with her, enjoying the unadulterated fear in her eyes.

"What's the matter apprentice?" I asked her, ignoring the other Jedi girl's gasp. "I do hope that your_ discoveries_ during your meditation haven't unnerved you at all?"

Bastila blinked and her tone became deadly, "…so you did do something to me?"

In fact I did – when I told her aboard my ship that I would keep her, I did keep my promise. While I had unfettered accesses to her mind, I had forged a bond between the two of us – it would prove useful in a multitude of ways. The ancient technique of the Sith to communicate to their servants through an implanted bond was something that I saved for few people and it did take days sometimes weeks to grow to full capacity. When I planted it within her, I did it under the assumption that she would soon enter training under me to be my servant and my weapon. But this was far more entertaining to say the least – she didn't know that, like it or not, our fates were intertwined. There was a catch to establishing a bond like the one that the girl and I now shared – my unnatural death would cause the girl to go insane, it would break her mentally beyond all possible repair. While her natural or unnatural death would wound me greatly and it would take me some time to regain my strength. Now, now it was serving as an insurance policy, a gift from the Force.

If they killed me, then Bastila would be driven so insane she'd try to kill herself.

If Bastila was killed then it would take me years to fully recover from the wound.

And if she, or the Council tried to remove it, well… the effect would almost be the same but it would be inflicted upon the both of us. We would be both so weakened that we might not recover and it would drive us both mad. Knowing the morals of the Jedi, and knowing how they would react, I knew that they would not harm me and risk losing their precious weapon. Jedi did not believe in luck, and to a certain extent the Sith did not either, but I was different in that respect. As I told Bastila, the future was always in motion and I did not think that the Force had set all of this up for my benefit. I was sure that it was luck that spurred me to create the bond with Bastila, and that bond almost assured me the protection of the Jedi from the Republic itself. As much as I was loathed to admit it, I did need their protection.

"Search your feelings apprentice," I told her quietly, keeping eye contact even as the shuttle shook slightly after entering the planet's atmosphere. "Clear your mind and search it, you will discover exactly what is there now – do not fear the bond."

"Bond?! What bond?!" The blonde, human female Jedi shouted from beside her.

"Be silent girl," I sneered at her, causing her to sit back down – it was good to know that even without the Force, the Jedi feared me. "This doesn't concern you!"

The look on Bastila's face was that of abject fear and a hint of curiosity, and I understood why she was feeling the way that she was. She was searching the bond through the Force and by this time I suspected that it was at its full strength and the implications of that were being revealed to her. We were bonded for life, I had the power to remove it myself but I would not do it – I wouldn't give up an asset such as the girl and I would not risk the anonymity of those who I was already bonded with. She was a part of that now and no matter how much mental discipline or training she acquired, there was no way for her to hide her mind from me. The girl was mine before she even knew it and now, she knew the deepest extent of my control over her and to my supreme delight, for the first time, she collapsed under the pressure that I was putting on her. She lunged at me, flying up from her seat across from me and she promptly began to try and strangle, if that was the word for it, me with her bare hands. I could not be more thrilled by this development.

"I hate you," She screamed, a hint of untamed rage in her voice, "I hate you!"

And just as I was tempted to reopen myself to the Force and push her off of me, her Jedi friend pulled her back to try and calm her down as the shuttle made its approach to the enclave. It would not be prudent to have her in a blind rage in front of her masters, but still, no matter the situation, I could not shake the look of utter victory and smugness on my face. I had just had my final confirmation Bastila Shan was wild, and very, very untamed and she would be easy to break when the time came. So I was content for the moment to just sit and watch the girl come undone.

"What did you do to her you monster?!" The other girl shrieked at me.

I smiled innocently at her, "Nothing, I just exposed who she really is."

"I'm going to rip your guts out!" Bastila growled at me, barely staying down.

"How delightfully violent," I complimented, yes – her power would be most useful in the days ahead and when I felt the shuttle's landing struts hit ground, my smile widened, luck was on my side again, "Oh, but I'm afraid that you might want to stop with your wonderfully dark threats my soon to-be apprentice, I suspect that your current masters are waiting and they will not be happy to hear such things."

And like a trained animal, she seemed to dampen down – and that pleased me.

She knew how to take orders and when to turn it on and off.

The perfect servant.

Excellent.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

I had expected the welcome to be somewhat colder from the Jedi – I had expected all of them to at least look at me in distaste, if not outright rage. After all that I had done to them, all of them that I had killed and after all of them that I had betrayed, there were still some that welcomed me with open arms. Granted, there were some that I had known for years and had genuinely looked like they wanted to spit in my face, but I was too blindsided by the warmness of others. Master Zhar had done something that he hadn't done since I was very young, he had hugged me – he was more notable of the many masters I had served in my life for his hugs. A more common being might mistake their actions for utter foolishness and naivety, but I knew the Jedi very well. I knew that even when I thought I was alone, somehow they would be watching me – it would be sometime before I was allowed true privacy to do what I wanted. It was then that it would be safe to contact the empire and then I would be able to return to my work, and possibly destroy this enclave.

The first week was somewhat unbearable and so incredibly boring – I was to meditate for five hours, have lunch, meditate for another three hours, Master Dorak would then drone endlessly about the history of the Jedi and that was my day. I had been one of the best students with this subject as a Padawan and I had retained most of that information, but now, now I could recite a complete timeline of the founding of the Republic and the Jedi half asleep. Something that did arouse my interest however and it was the fact that the last time I had seen Bastila was when she attacked me on the shuttle. In fact, when I tentatively slipped past the neural disruptor and tried to locate through our bond, I discovered that she wasn't even on the planet and it made my blood boil momentarily. Did I have to do all of the work myself?! While that fool Dorak was droning on about long dead politicians and Jedi Masters, could he not feel the seed of my influence within the girl's mind?

How incredibly stupid! It just baffled me how they couldn't feel something wrong with the girl and it annoyed me that they were putting her at risk. Not because she would die, I could care less about her life and her happiness – as long as she was simply alive, it would not affect me. If I toppled over one day in the courtyard because of something that the impetuous little child did to get herself killed, I would not be a happy man. Oh if those fools sent the girl to her death, I would slaughter them all in my anger and I would burn this planet to the ground before leaving it. They needed to touch her in the Force, they needed to feel the fact that she and I were bonded, they needed to understand that what happened to me affected her and what happened to her would affect me. If they did not discover it soon and if I did not see her soon, I decided before slipping back into a meditative trance in my assigned quarters, I would go directly to them and tell them myself.

Looking up to the calm deep blue sky that hung over the courtyard that I had spent a lot of my childhood free-time in, I sighed deeply. This courtyard might have been the only redeeming thing about this place in my opinion – it was the only place that seemed remotely peaceful throughout my apprenticeship. Some of her earliest memories were of escaping the yammering of my peers to this courtyard to absorb the quietness and meditate. Kreia's initial lessons of feeling something through the Force began here, and I couldn't help but replicate the same lessons as I sat on my knees in almost the same spot years later. I didn't care if this placed burned down, but at the same time, there were some places here that did mean something to me.

When I heard a pair of footsteps behind me, I opened my eyes and turned my head slightly to give my audience an indication that I was listening. For the most part I had been ignored by the younger Jedi and that was a good thing, I did not have a lot of patience for children to begin with and I'd prefer not to use what patience I had on Jedi children. Actually turning my head to take the boy and the girl in, I smothered a chuckle at their facial expressions. They had no doubt heard about my presence here and wondered where the scary, evil Lord of the Sith was, well – I reflected dryly – he wasn't that far away. I was sure that these two were cursing their masters at this point in time, "You two are interrupting my meditation?"

"We're sorry my lord," My widened from my right ear to my left ear, either these two were not comfortable with referring to me by my actual name or maybe the Force of my personality was forcing the rightful title out of their little pee-brains.

I felt my annoyance grow, but I still managed to sound calm to them, "What is it?"

"The Jedi Council requests your presence in the Council Chamber," The girl told me with a respectable strength in her voice, "Padawan Shan is in the chamber as well."

A smile spread across my lips as I assimilated that information for a moment, I could see no other reason that she and I were being summoned by the Council together. I knew how they were going to react – they could react no other way and if they did, I would be forced to defend myself. I had grown fairly good at circumventing the neural disruptor and I think if I exerted myself even further I could pull it off. If I was going to be attacked by the Jedi Council, which I would readily admit that there was a slight chance of that happening, I would not be caught off guard so easily. And when I easily rose to my knees, I offered the children an easy smile and turned to begin in the direction of the council chamber.

* * *

I had been in this chamber countless times in my life, so much so that I could actually remember remarking to Malak that I had gotten in too much trouble and I had been the age of that boy and girl who had summoned me. I made my final stand to the Jedi here before going taking up command of the Republic Military, I had witnessed my first master's exile in this room, it held a great deal of memories for me. Now it would host another set of memories, as I stood before another council and prepared to be berated for something that I did. But this set of memories was different, I was no Jedi in this instance – I did not take orders from them, as if I had obeyed them _when_ I was a Jedi in this first place. But I patiently stood there in front of Master Vander, Vrook, Dorak and Zhar, listening to them talk and occasionally shifting my gaze to the glaring Jedi Padawan Shan beside them.

With my arms folded behind my back, I stood lazily in front of the present members of the council and put on a patronizing expression. I was no longer a child – I was no longer some rebellious student to punish for putting Kath Hound waste in Master Vrook's boots. I was the Dark Lord of the Sith, I commanded countless legions of men and women ready to do my bidding at a simple word. I struck fear into the hearts of the deadliest warriors in the galaxy – I had decapitated Mandalore the Ultimate and had destroyed planets, the fools would not talk to me like mere child.

"Silence," I snapped easily, earning a scowl from all in the room, but they did stop lecturing me as if I was still under their authority, "You have some nerve to talk down to me – I have not been a Jedi for quite some time and even then as I recall correctly, your opinions didn't mean much to me. The girl and I are bonded and I and I alone possess the power to sever the bond, any attempt that you make to do so will not only cause great physical harm to both myself and Bastila, but mental as well. Master Dorak, do the archives say anything about side effects of this bond?"

The man shook his head and leaned forward in his chair, "No, care to elaborate."

I smirked and began to pace, occasionally sharing a look with Bastila, "I'd take great pleasure in informing you what would happen – now keep in mind that I did not do this intentionally, the girl got the best of me when I expected to capture her, I placed the bond there because I intended on transforming her into one of my servants. But when she captured me, I knew that it would prove to be a great insurance policy, because the Jedi will not risk a life or risk harm coming upon s-…"

"With you? I'd bend that rule," Bastila snapped at me before she could help herself.

I chuckled as the Masters admonished her with a look and then back to me to give me the signal to continue. If there was one constant about Jedi Masters, they did pay attention to Sith knowledge very closely if only so they knew how to do destroy it or fight against it, "…as I said… it is a great insurance policy, because if I die, or if I am seriously injured, not even mortally wounded, but simply greatly injured, it will cause her to lose her grip on reality and never get it back, and she'll die, _fas_t."

Dorak raised an eyebrow, "Your death will cause hers?"

"Yes, either right at the point of my death, or the madness she'll fly into will cause her to take her own life," I nodded with a pleasant smile – but then I sobered slightly, "But, the tradeoff is this, if she dies unnaturally, it will wound me quite gravely, it will not kill me, but it will take several years for me to regain my former strength. Nevertheless, if you insist on sending the Padawan on dangerous missions where her life is in danger – I will not be pleased and when I'm done, you won't either. I must insist that she remain close to me, for her safety and for mine."

Vrook snorted, "You are in no position to dictate terms."

I had to quell the anger that rose up within me at the sound of the old-man's mocking tone, something that I had heard for years and dreaded, but I would no longer be intimidated by this man, "Alright then – how about I make a promise, I promise you this Master Vrook, if Padawan Shan is killed and I am wounded because of that I make you this promise. I will tie you up with this collar around your neck, and I will inflict unimaginable pain upon your Padawan and I'll make sure she's alive through the whole thing. Then after she finally loses the will to live, I will finally kill her, and then I will move to your Padawan, and yours, yours and finally yours Master Vandar. I will not break the bond, and I will not risk her life – she will remain under my protection or I am going to slaughter everyone in this enclave and I will start with the children, working my way up to you fine gen-…"

Dorak and Vrook seemed quite disturbed, Zhar was not terribly shocked and Vandar seemed troubled – this was not the reaction that I had expected. In fact I was quite sure that all of them, universally, would allow my request but keep the girl from me at all times. I knew Zhar and Vandar very well, I knew what their expressions meant, and when I looked to Bastila, she wore an expression of utter shock on her face, something that I had seen on her face through all our encounters. I decided to try and give her a show of good faith as well as the council, "Do not fear Padawan Shan, this bond is not that intrusive, we can hear each other's thoughts, communicate with each other, sense each other's feelings – but this bond cannot influence your actions, I, or the Dark Side itself cannot somehow take control."

Dorak interrupted me, "So it is not corrupting?"

I shook my head, not taking my eyes off of Bastila, "No – there are such bonds, but this is not one of them, it was something developed by the ancient Sith Lords to communicate with their deadliest of servants and to spy, not dominate their mind – providing that neither of us die – it is quite harmless and can be a great asset."

"No – we cannot allow Bastila to be in contact with the Sith," Vrook practically spat the last word out at me as his objections grew louder than the chatter from the rest of the council, "With the neural disruptor you are no threat and can be defeated…"

The laugh that escaped me was unintentional to be sure, I had only been here a week and it was still not time to lord over them the fact that this thing was pretty much useless. It was only a matter of time before I could completely remove it from my neck, but I was still just as deadly by circumventing it. With my hands folded around my back, I relished his look of confusion on his face and took the more direct route. I would be purposely ambiguous as to whether or not I could and had circumvented the collar, but allude to the fact that I could do it, "Master Vrook, seeing as you spent the entire length of the Mandalorian War scaring students with how far I had fallen to the Dark Side, you wouldn't know this: I was captured by the Mandalorians once, they thought that a collar much like one could entrap me."

I smirked as his face fell, "The collar was electrified, but I fought through the pain with the force of my own will and it eventually destroyed itself – the collar didn't hold me, and truthfully, I could replicate the same results with the charming o-…"

"These collars are not electrified, so you can't repeat that," Zhar interrupted.

True – but the difference was that I was going around the neural block using my will instead of charging through the pain to use the Force. I turned to him and smiled warmly, I didn't hate Zhar, I thought he was a fool but I did not despise him like Dorak and Vrook, "You've known me since I was a child Master, you know I usually don't stop until I find a way around something that is keeping me trapped."

Before he could respond, I addressed this all again, "Here is how this will play out, you execute me, Bastila goes mad and more than likely kills herself, if Bastila dies, I will kill every living thing in this enclave. Strip me of the Force then? The Dark Side of the Force has a way around that – I am in the perfect position to dictate."

Vandar sighed and lowered his head – his opinion was what ultimately mattered on this council, "We expect something in return for keeping Bastila out of harm's way."

"I will not divulge military secrets, and even if I did, how would you know that I'm not leading you into a trap?" I grinned at the distraught Jedi Master – he, like his peers obviously didn't like to be boxed into a corner. If they stripped me of the Force, the ancient ritual to regain it would be a small price to pay, if they executed me, their precious weapon would kill herself, and if she died, all of them would die.

In layman's terms – I won and they didn't even know until it was too late.

"How are you producing so many ships?" Zhar inquired lightly from his side.

I rolled my eyes, "Wouldn't you like to know."

"How?" Vrook repeated more firmly, "We demand that you tell us!"

"Make me you insipid, sanctimonious fool," I glared vibroblades at him as he did the same exact thing to me – he did not like being called names. I then fixed him with a mocking glaring and folded my arms over my chest, "Oh that's right – you can't! to make it simple Masters, you might have me – but I have the girl and if the girl is put in harm's way and killed, you will suffer for it, remember that when thinking-…"

Before I was about to finish and storm out to leave them to think about it, I was momentarily taken aback by how Bastila reacted. I had not expected her to react this way, to throw herself on the sword for the Jedi – I had not expected it at all. I had expected some sort of self-preservation instinct to kick in, but no, she would rather risk being killed to just wound me then to preserve herself. It actually made me reconsider severing the bond, but no – no it was clear that I would not have to go that far yet. Until I had to do so I was content to sit and watch her have a little episode in front of the one group that it was most unadvisable to do so in front of and the more that I listened to her, I grew more pleased, she was quite vocal.

"Masters – if I might add a little sanity here, what good could possibly arise out of bowing the wishes of a Sith Lord?!" She screeched at them and I silently observed that my manipulations were tearing down the wall of emotional control fairly quickly and it was all so delicious to watch, "He is probably making this entire situation up!"

I cocked my head, "If this collar was removed, I could prove to you that the bond is quite real – and no, I have no other wish then to secure my own wellbeing and unfortunately for you my dear, that means that I must protect you at all costs."

"Will no harm come to Padawan Shan?" I was quite surprised to hear Master Vandar ask me that question – he either believed that I hadn't overwhelmed the collar and wouldn't seek to influence Bastila or he was resigning himself to the situation he was in and deal with my actions later. Either way, I knew that I had just triumphed.

I nodded, "I will make sure that she suffers no harm."

"And can you do it without the Force?" Zhar questioned from beside him.

I nodded again – despite the fact that I could touch the Force, I could keep the girl safe without openly using it. Physical training mattered just as much as Force use, I knew how to use vibroblades, blasters, I had made sure be well rounded with all weapons. Besides, a slight nudge to an enemy in the Force would not attract the attention of the Jedi – so yes, I was in the perfect position to protect her either way. The girl would have to get used to it – I would never sever the bond until I was sure that she was beyond my reach and so long as we were bonded, her safety mattered as much as mine did and I, as the Dark Lord of the Sith, would allow no harm to come to her. If I had to do it within the confines of the Jedi, I would do so.

"I can and I will, provided I am allowed to use weapons?" I asked lightly.

Vandar nodded, "You'll have access to all we can provide, except lightsabers."

I smirked inwardly… it wasn't the lightsaber that made the Sith dangerous, it was the Sith that made the Sith dangerous. But outwardly I nodded, and looked to Bastila, "I take it that you and your little friends will not mind my presence?"

Bastila huffed and shook her head, "They will! Why is this necessary?!"

"Must you display stupidity at every turn!" I groaned and rolled my eyes, she had her moments – but otherwise I had pretty much revised my opinion of her. The girl was a top grade idiot – she was a special pawn of the Jedi and nothing more, "If you die or are seriously harmed, I will be seriously wounded both physically and through the Force. Since you insist on being an imbecile and trying to get yourself killed at every turn – I must take it upon myself to protect you from yourself!"

She looked affronted, but Master Vandar stopped her, "And Padawan Shan, keep in mind that if you harm him in any way, or if some tragic accident should befall him – that it will be you who suffers the most, in case you didn't pay attention, you'll-…"

"I know Master," She snapped irritably and nodded, "I'll go mad."

"It would seem that your fates are intertwined and there is nothing we can do about it at this point," Vandar said, possibly not realizing or choosing not to throw the fact that I had set these events into emotions, "I do suggest that until such time that Lord Revan is convinced that he cannot manipulate you, you force yourself to get along with him. It would be advisable to let no harm come to e-…"

I had long tuned him about and reflected on the situation that I found myself in, so Vandar was aware of why I wouldn't break the bond with Bastila – alright. Now I was in a position to secure our mutual safety because the girl wasn't capable of doing it herself. Finally, I was in a closer position to alerting my forces of my location so that they could extract me from this glorified prison. And I would have to accomplish this while still wearing this accursed collar and it momentarily overwhelmed me that I would have to accomplish this without my full connection to the Force. I would have to use all of my cunning to get through this without injury.

"Lord Revan, you will do nothing to endanger her," Vandar commanded me.

I narrowed my eyes but nodded with a touch of sarcasm, "I would _never_ do that."

* * *

This would be amusing if I were not the victim in this situation.

I had experienced a lot in my relatively short life: I had won a war, I was on the verge of winning another one – I destroyed entire planets, converted legions of Jedi and conquered half of the Galaxy. However, I had never been in this position in recent memory. Probably not since I was a Padawan myself had I been forced into something like this and even then it was tolerable – I had Malak with me. Thanks to the Jedi Council's infant wisdom however, I had been moved from my secure room and now I was sharing a dormitory with Bastila and several other young female Padawans. I felt out of place here to say the least, especially with one of the more peculiar girls that lived with Bastila – the one who would not stop looking at me.

She had already bluntly reminded me that I had slain the previous owner of this bed on my ship a week and a half ago and now, now she was looking at me in utter fascination. I had expected the council to cover my legacy and my reputation in a layer of foreboding and make it clear that I was not be emulated, let alone explored, but this child obviously was ignoring such warnings. Even as I sat cross legged on the bed, trying to center myself, I couldn't quite achieve while I felt the girl's eyes boring into the side of my head – my annoyance grew by the seconds.

"Child – do you have something to ask me? You keep staring at me," I snapped.

She blinked but nodded, "Y-You're really Darth Revan?"

I scoffed inwardly, what a stupid question, but I smiled at her, "In the flesh."

"Do you remember the Battle of Althir III?" She asked me quietly, presumably trying not to attract the attention of her dormitory mates. I nodded and quickly thought back to that battle of the Mandalorian Wars. The Mandalorian's had conquered the planet years before and on that planet – I was still considered a hero for invading and liberating the planet from the Neo-Crusaders, so much so that the planet was loyal to me to this day. It served as a heavily fortified fallback position if they Republic should ever push us back to the Outer Rim, it was a good war trophy.

Besides, their ship and weapon building skills proved useful in pacifying the rest of the sector – it was just one less place I had to worry about, "Are you familiar wit-…"

"My father supplied off world metals to the Althiri," She explained quietly, and I could practically feel the emotions that stirred within her at mentioning it, "My parents were caught on world when the Mandalorian's invaded, we were forced to stay there until the Republic took back the planet. I wish that you had gotten their earlier – because my father was killed two months before I was born by a Mando."

I quietly repressed the fact that the story did tug on my heartstrings and raised an eyebrow, was this Jedi Padawan expressing her gratitude for me invading a world and cutting down hundreds of Mandalorians? She couldn't be more the twenty years old if what she said was true and she was looking at me with a childlike intensity.

"Well, I apologize for the indignities that your family, as well as all of the other families affected by the war had to suffer at the hands of the Mandalorians," I said, picking my words very carefully, "And I think you exposed one of the reasons that I went to war in the first place – but if I may ask, I feel you have an intense resentment of the Mandalorians, why are in this place that prevents your revenge?"

It wasn't so much a manipulative question as it was a genuine question, why would she deprive herself of that? It was an active policy of my empire to exterminate the remains of the remaining clans on sight – she would be a useful asset on that front if she could be bent the proper way. And by the way she reacted to my question, she was not entirely opposed to the idea and that was a very good sign. That quite simply meant that she was pliable and, provided that she kept our conversation to herself, it would not take a lot to make her fall to the Dark Side. It wasn't the indignant anger that Bastila would fall into, or the self-righteous amusement that a Jedi Master would wear, it was as if she just didn't know. She spoke as if this was all she had ever known and she couldn't imagine anything else, "It's all I know."

"The Jedi did not want me to go to war, they would have preferred that half of the Galaxy burned down before they did anything to stop the Mandalorian's advance, in fact, if I were a betting man – I'd say that they'd have not done anything until Mandalore himself had arrived at the Capital," I allowed some the very old irritation at the subject to slip into my voice, "A Jedi's life is tinged with emotional repression and what they call justice, but again, it was not the Jedi Order that liberated Althir."

The seed of doubt had been planted – excellent.

"I-…I will think of-…" She was cut off, but I knew that it would work.

"Do not speak to him Jeral, his words are poison," Bastila snapped from across the room and I grinned inwardly, she and I had not shared a cordial word since the council meeting hours ago. Turing and looking at her and her little group studying, I raised an eyebrow and my lips actually quirked up in utter amusement at the girl.

Had I really been reduced to this? Part of me wanted to mold and turn Bastila into the machine that she could become, part of me just wanted to… well "worship" her and the other half wanted to strangle her for putting me in the position that I was in at the moment. She was so very lucky that she was very attractive and very powerful or I would not be planning her conversion, but her long and painful death.

"I'm simply having a conversation with the young lady, and as much as you may not like it my dear _Padawan_," I stretched out the word and paused on it on purpose to try and point out that the pretentious girl carried the ego of Jedi Master, "I am stuck here with you, and I will not sit in a corner and stare at the wall all day. You can spout your arrogant commands at me all day – but unlike these lovely ladies, I do not have to abide by them. Now what is it that you're studying? I can help you."

The girls look hesitantly towards Bastila and it was very clear to me in that moment that this dormitory operated under a leadership hierarchy with her at the top. The girl was very, very annoying, sure – and she was bigheaded and very unstable, but perhaps she could see that I could a valuable tool in her pursuit of Jedi knowledge.

"Keep in mind my dears," I said, looking at all of them, "I was not always the _big, bad _and _evil_ Dark Lord of the Sith that your beloved Masters make me out to be on a daily basis. I was once a Jedi like you, and I was told that if I had not gone off to war, I was very close to being promoted to the rank of Master. I figure that if we're going to be living together, we should at least try to get along – am I alone in this?"

The girls were silent for a moment, ignoring the glare that Bastila was sending them, and then one of them finally broke from the pack. She was a young Twi'lek girl, she couldn't have been more than eighteen years old and by the lack of lightsaber – I surmised that she was behind in her training. There were so many opportunities for new weapons here, first the girl whose family was Althir and now this girl who was behind. I could complete her training, "We're studying Force Bonds – Master Dorak is interrupting normal lessons with this – it's quite unusual."

I smirked and looked at Bastila, "It's that so?"

She scowled and forced a nod, "Yes – a little too late, but yes."

"As it happens," I said with the biggest smile on my face as I got up from the bed and sat down in an empty chair in their little circle. The irony of this moment didn't escape me, but perhaps it was time that Bastila knew how much control that I really had over the Force. Perhaps it was time she know that I was a Master of all the "I studied uncommon Force Powers when I was a Padawan and I focused my studies on Force Bonds – over the years I mastered the art. Admittedly, I've gone down a darker route and mastered the dark forms of Force Bonds-…"

I chuckled as Bastila bared her teeth at me and then I turned back to the group with a charming smile. By the time I was ready to leave Dantooine, these girls would be putty in my hands, Bastila too, "…but I'm still a master of the forms that Dorak is trying to teach you, or teach you how to avoid… how can I help you?"

And that finally broke the ice between me and the rest of the girls, I could sense that they had been hesitantly curious, but now they weren't hesitant anymore. I could surmise however that Bastila still hated me with a deep passion and it would take more than helping her study to unfreeze her to me, it would take much more.

I began by explaining the more simplistic form of Force Bonds, that of a Master to their Apprentice, I explained how it allowed two Force Sensitive wielders could communicate from massive distances, through hellish battles and even if one of the bond mates was in a comatose state. I didn't tell them that I regarded the Jedi and their bonding methods as weak – I didn't tell them that these bonds typically were so incomplete that they deprived the bonded of their true potential. I didn't tell them or Bastila for that matter that with a bond, I could rip the knowledge out of the minds of those who I had bonded with. They would discover all of that in time.

And by the time I was done, I would teach these young Jedi the true power of the Force – and their little leader would be my apprentice and nothing could stop me.

I smiled at them as they expressed their understanding, this was becoming easy.


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

* * *

I had the benefit of having Zhar Lestin has one of my many masters over the years and even though he possessed the ego and the self-centered nature of a Jedi Master like Vrook, he was different. I knew how he felt about me, he felt as if I was the wayward member of the flock that he never got back – he felt that my fall was his fault. He was foolish and idealistic, but he was perhaps the only Jedi alive that I had a favorable opinion of. He was a fantastic teacher, both with academic knowledge and the art of dueling, but he was simply that, he was one of my many teachers. The title of _Master _was a token of sorts, something to soothe his Jedi-ego, the only being in the galaxy that I would call Master and genuinely mean it was Kreia. Of all of my mentors, she was the only one that I would call _"Master"_ and genuinely mean it. However, Zhar proved to be good company in my imprisonment.

Things had been progressing rather slowly, I had to admit that – but the council had kept their part of the bargain and so I was keeping mine. Sure, they denied me access to even the holonet news, but I had a feeling that my empire was holding its own against the Republic, even in my absence. If things got very bad, then the Dark Jedi on Rakata had implicit instructions to seek out Darth Traya and her apprentices. For now, I was stuck on Dantooine and I was finding it more and more difficult to occupy my time. Bastila and her friends spent most of their time in the library and I, I found myself doing things that I hadn't do since I was a very young, I found myself sparring with Master Zhar on an almost daily basis with Vibroblades.

There was a reason that Master Zhar trained students, he was a master duelist and I had little doubt that if he had been on my flagship, I would not have been able to win the duel with ease. In fact, the more we dueled, the more I realized that without being enhanced with the Force, it was very difficult to duel with him. We had dueled seven times in the past couple of days and I had only won one match out of all of them. It frustrated me to no end and I found myself tapping into the untapped and virtually ignored reserves of calm to fight him. Emotions, particularly those of rage and anger were crucial in fighting with the style of the Sith Lords, but with the Force. Without the Force, those emotions made me make mistakes, with the Force, I usually had an idea of where an enemy's strike would land, but without it, I was making a whole host of mistakes. A misstep and a wrong blow here, an inadequate strike there, I was finding it more and more difficult to remain calm.

"You see your _true_ fighting potential without the armor of the Force around you in battle, don't you?" He asked me as we sat on one of the side benches cooling down.

I took another drink of the water I had brought and nodded, wiping the sweat off of my forehead, "I never really had to fight without it Master, but yes – it is very disconcerting to see how weak I am without using it, very, very, disconcerting."

If I knew him, which I was fairly confident that I did, I knew that he was holding back from spouting the ideologically driven nonsense straight from the Jedi Code itself. I was having a hard time myself in restraining the urge to point out the Sith belief as well. I personally did not believe the Force was my servant, I respected the Force, but when I wanted to wield it like a weapon – I did not hesitate to do so.

The Jedi had a very black and white view on respect and use of the Force and due to my personal belief, I would be labeled as a Sith regardless if I felt I was one or not. I believed in the Dark Side of the Force, I believed that ruthless aggression was the only way to counter ruthless aggression – and I believed that unstoppable power was the only way to cure the galaxy's ills. I did not fall to the Dark Side of the Force for bloodlust like Master Vrook like to frequently assume, I fell for a reason, but they would never understand that and I would never tell them that. It was simply easier to think of things in black and white, for all us it would seem. I, however, would never really stop examining things for what they actually were.

"Would you like to fight me without the collar?" Zhar asked me suddenly.

I couldn't contain my disbelief in time and as a result I turned and looked at him as if he was the craziest being on this planet. I had to question his "wisdom" for a quite a few seconds… I was Lord of the Sith, I was capable of quite a lot and if they restored my full connection to the Force, I had no doubt that I could kill him and everyone in this enclave if I wanted to with a simple movement of my wrist. And then I wondered what other possible motives he could have for offering me such tempting bait. Was it a test? In regards to those sort of things, Kreia and him were very much alike, preferring to teach just as much through example as they were through actual academics and exercises. Was he testing what I would do once he deactivated the collar? Did he want to assess whether or not I would strangle him?

I decided to assume the later, because frankly no one trusted me in this enclave, not that much anyway. But it appeared the my old master was wanting to test my ability to resist such a strong temptation – and I would give him an answer that might shook and secretly anger Master Vrook, "No Master – I can take you on."

He smiled at me and I returned it with one of my own – I had known him since I was a little boy and I had gotten along with him more than any of the others, Kreia excluded. He trained me for a time, taught me how to duel, we knew how each other thought – well at least I knew how he thought. I had changed a great deal, but at the core, I was still the same child who would come to him and seek knowledge, "Are you ready? Or I have depleted the energy of the Lord of the Sith?"

My eyes steeled and I gripped the handle of the blade, "Not even close."

* * *

I knew that he inspired the same baser instincts in my friends as he did in me whenever we watched him spar with Master Zhar. We were not entirely unfamiliar with hormones and attraction, and I knew those feelings well enough to know that I was feeling a heavy physical attraction towards him. That was the extent of it, I didn't care for Darth Revan as a person, but he was incredibly attractive and that was the only remotely redeeming thing about him. The way the sweat glistened off of hi gloriously tanned skin, the way the muscles flexed as he blocked a strike from Master Zhar, I found myself leaning forward on the bench and biting my lip. It was unnerving and even as I tried to force myself to recite the code, I found couldn't do it. It took him actually noticing me staring at him for me to break out of my lust-induced daze. I was a Jedi! Such things were below me and I should control it!

But when he grinned at me, I shivered as promptly realized I had a big problem.

"My dear," He said, approaching me as Master Zhar went in the opposite direction, and I had to hold in a physical reaction as he stood in front of me in all of his muscled, sweaty-… by the Force, "You seem to be staring at something, what is it?"

Forcing my eyes from his deeply defined and muscled bare chest, I looked back up to his eyes and glared daggers I into them. I was beginning to regret not killing him when I had the chance to do so. I was beginning to regret even being born for that matter – because if I hadn't been "graced" with the gift of Battle Meditation, I wouldn't have been selected to board his ship, he wouldn't have wormed his way into my mind and I wouldn't be sitting here, rolling around in my extreme attraction to a Sith Lord. The worst part of it? By the glint in his eyes, I knew that he knew almost exactly what was I thinking about and that just made me burn with rage. He was already arrogant and egotistical, the last thing I needed was for him to me smug about this. But it was too late and now I had yet another reason to hate him.

"No," I began, recovering well enough to sound rather disinterested and sarcastic, just how I wanted to sound, "I merely observing that for such a legendary warrior, you seem to be having a difficultly defeating a simply, lowly, egotistical Master."

He chuckled and I almost pulled away as he leaned down to my ear, and ignoring the fluttering that was now running through me at the feel of his breath against my neck, he finally spoke, "Without the Force, I usually have to take my time in completing a task – by the look of you, you'd like to know what I can do without it."

I could feel the blush staining my cheeks as the real meaning of what he meant hit me and I quickly forced myself recover, "You are the most egotistical, fatheaded, idiotic male that I have ever had the misfortune to know and if I had one reque-…"

"What would that one request be my dear? That you'd me to sleep with you? Since you so obviously want that, or would you want to kill me?" He chuckled again as he sat down next to me on the bench and my blood began to boil again, "Either way, it sorely lacks in all of that tranquility, balance and selflessness that your masters have taught you to uphold. But enough of that, you've come for something, what?"

I blinked at the abrupt redirection and refocused my thoughts, "Well-…I eh…"

"Oh will you spit it out!" He snapped at me impatiently.

"The masters have decided that to calm myself, I need to meditate within an intense nexus of the Force," I answered, suddenly very nervous about this entire situation, "The only place that is even remotely alike to a nexus on this planet i-…"

"Is the lightsaber crystal cave on the plains," He finished for me, nodding.

"Will you stop finish my sentences!" I snapped loudly at him.

He shook his head and smiled at me innocently, "No."

"And why not?!" I was indignant at this point – it was as if he thought I was stupid.

"Because you're an idiot," He answered with another smile and I glowered inwardly, so he did think I was stupid, "I had to do the same thing several times in my time on this planet and you can achieve the same type of calm and balance in the plains themselves. It would be better than running into a big swarm of Kinrath adults."

He had a point, but that still didn't explain how I could do it, "The caves have a strong concentration of pure light energy, it's either there, or this place, not th-…"

"You_ are _an idiot," He shook his head in disbelief and ran his hand through his hair and turned to look back at me, "Either you or your master in any case – you don't need to sit in a cave swarming with Kinrath or the enclave – if you center yourself just enough and feel the heart of this planet, the life ebbing around you, you calm yourself. Whoever your first crèche master was, he or she was terribly inadequate."

I blinked at him, "Y-you're crèche master taught you this?"

"Oh yes," He nodded with a laugh, "It has been valuable over the years."

And it was strange, he seemed almost human.

* * *

Things had been tense in the three weeks that Revan had been gone, some of the Dark Jedi believed that the Dark Lord was dead, and with Malak dead that it was their right to ascended to the head of the empire. They were summarily executed by their fiercely loyal peers who firmly believed that Revan had been kidnapped by the Jedi. As for the military, Admiral Varrow had assumed command of the Admiralty and the fleet, while Admiral Karath had assumed control of ground forces in the interim. The inward thrusts to the core were stopped, advances were halted and the individual task forces and detachments were given orders to fortify whatever sector of space or planet they occupied and prepare for the Republic's doubtless reprisal. They were handling things, but nerves were becoming frayed.

"We have ten thousand ships in reserve," Vice-Admiral Cral, the newest and youngest addition to the Admiralty Corp said as he pounded his clenched fist on the table, "We have millions of troops in reserve, we should fortify the weak links, and if this council will not approve of the action, then I will ignore it and order my-…"

"You will do no such thing," Varrow responded to him, his voice cool with the underlying tone of annoyance and boredom, "If you do, I will not hesitate to have you executed – all of us are aware that Lord Revan always has clear instructions for situations like this. In the event of his death, incapacitation or if he is unable to lead in any form or fashion, then command falls to the Head of the Fleet and the Head of the Military. Lord Revan is missing and since Lord Malak attempted to kill Lord Revan and Lord Revan promptly killed him, those titles are now invested in Admiral Karath and myself. This council is rendered invalid until such time Lord Revan returns or there is a successor that emerges – our orders stand Admiral."

He made a motion with his fingers to one of the Dark Jedi lining the wall and when he walked forward to stand directly behind Cral, the heavily shrouded man activated his crimson lightsaber and held it directly at the cowering man's throat.

It was a simple matter of falling in line or else, they were not in dire straits at this point, but without a clear leader, they would be. Order needed to be kept until Lord Revan's fate was clear – reorganization could take place after that was discovered, but until then, they would fall in line or die. Looking across the rectangular briefing table at Karath, he nodded once at his imperceptible approval of his blunt threat to Cral and then looked back to Cral himself, "Now, understand this, any show of disloyalty will be met with overwhelming response – until we can find out what happened to Lord Revan, we need to keep order and one way or the other, we will."

Cral lowered his head and nodded, "I understand – _sir_."

"Good," He nodded at the Dark Jedi, who deactivated his lightsaber and returned to his previous position at the wall. Varrow knew that they too had trouble within their ranks, but the overwhelming majority of them were staying in line and destroying all disloyalty. They did understand its importance right now, "Next briefing please?"

* * *

Master Vrook was right about one thing.

I did enjoy the baser things, such as hunting – it had always been a secret pastime of mine, and as I circled around the deeply meditating Bastila, shooting any unfortunate Kath Hounds that got close to my blaster rifle, I began to enjoy it even more. It was not often that I used such crude weapons when I had the Force, I could snap the neck the largest and most dangerous being with a flick of my fingers and therefore I had no need of them. I really didn't have need of my lightsabers either when I thought about it that way, but I enjoyed the movement. Sometimes it simply just became tedious killing something so easily – I preferred challenge. But if I had to go through the rest of my life without my lightsabers and simply relying on my strength in the Force, I would do so. But this was one of those moments where I didn't care, three blasts, one to the neck and one the hind legs and it was over. It seemed that Dantooine was proving to bring the Sith out in me quite well.

"You seem to be getting sick amusement off such a thing," Bastila broke the quiet with her arrogant pronouncement and I spun back around to face her, looking up at me with those doe eyes of hers. Such a beautiful and powerful girl, it was stunning.

"Would you prefer that the Kath Hounds maul you?" I asked her lightly.

She scowled but shook her head, "No."

"Then shut up and let me have my fun," I said, turning around to resume my watch for another one of the hulking hounds, "Have you found success in your attempts."

"Yes," She nodded, but then she tensed, "But I can't hold onto it for very long."

"You are strong in the Force, but you lack the purity of willpower to control it," I sighed and shook my head, "It's such a waste of your true talents that you deny yourself control over your will. With strong will, your beauty and your powers would allow you to conquer worlds. But instead you relegate yourself to being a pawn."

She shook her head, "And what else would I be? _Your_ pawn?"

"Perhaps," I answered quietly and slowly, choosing my tone and my response very, very carefully at this point, "But then again, you could be a queen with your power and your ability, the right hands you could make the Galaxy bow down to you in worship. But then again, that doesn't appeal to you, does it? You're like me then."

I scowled at her snort, "You love that some cultures worship you like a god."

No – I did not, what she didn't know was that inwardly I was uncomfortable with that sort of thing. It was another case of this image that the Grand Council on Coruscant had built around me after I left. I simply knew how not to waste a potential resource, "No, you're wrong, I don't do the things I do to be worshiped and I do not stop the worship because I like to be worshiped. I see the practice as a means to an end, your first lesson from is that you never waste a potential asset."

Bastila seemed to misunderstand my intentions for her, I did not intent for her to be any normal "pawn" – I did not want her to be a simple Dark Jedi that was only a marginal threat. I intended to train her to be my right hand, I intended her to have power that was second only to my own – and I intended on keeping her under my thumb until such time that I could no longer lead. I would not repeat the mistakes that I made with Malak and she didn't seem to understand that what Malak became and what I intended for her were two different things. But regardless, she simply scoffed and returned to her task and it left me with me alone with my thoughts. It had been _difficult _to return to these plains, I hadn't been back here in quite a while.

* * *

I was angry, so very angry with the situation that I found myself in.

Malak and I had tracked down the first map to this region, but the texts were incomplete and I knew, I just knew that it had to be in one of two places, this cave or those ruins near the enclave. I still didn't understand why I didn't choose the ruins, but that didn't matter now. All that mattered was that I was trapped in the cave and the rock barrier that I had created with the Force was barely adequate to keep the Kinrath at bay. I had to have paced for a solid ten minutes for finally giving into my frustration, I would either have to expose myself as an initiate of the Dark Side and kill these… things, or I could bring the ceiling down and I was running the risk of being crushed to death or creating a bigger trap for myself.

And the choice of being killed or being exposed was just a risk that I would have to take – I was here against the wishes of the Jedi as it was, so in a way it did not matter, they had already formed their opinions of me. That's how I found myself kneeling behind the wall of rock, reaching out in the Force to envelope the cave in my presence. It was difficult to hold my concentration on this many life forms for extended periods of time, but as I kneeled there, trying, I found that it was becoming easier by the moments. It was more difficult for fully-sentient beings, but these mindless creatures, they were easy and I smiled as my hold on them in the Force was solidified. And with a final exertion of the Force, I snapped the "lives" of all of the Kinrath in the cave, simultaneously and the simultaneous death scream that was let out by them was almost deafening. It would have been if I had not been reeling from the thick inundation of the Dark Side that rushed all over me.

I was inebriated on the power of the Dark Side and I shivered at the feel of the raw, intense power that was just bursting to manifest itself around me. And when I could feel the cave devoid of the life of the Kinrath, I extended my hand and grunted the pure exertion of energy that blew the rock cover away. This would be the last time that I ever entered this cave – I was sure of that, the council would not allow me to enter it and further corrupt their precisions focusing crystals. But it did not matter at all, I was done with the Jedi and Dantooine, I didn't need them.

I reached for the comlink of my belt, "Malak – have you broken through the lock?"

"Yes Master," I smiled – I would never grow tired of hearing him call me that, "I took quite a while and waiting inside of me where some surprises, but I've handled them. There is a door to a back chamber here that still refuses to open for me…"

I scowled behind my mask, "Keep trying to unlock it – I'm on my way."

"Did you find anything in the caves?" He asked lightly.

"No," I smirked as I neared the exit of the cave, "But I did create a little mess."

That was an understatement to say the least as I avoided stepping on the Kinrath carcasses that littered the grounds of the cave. The Jedi fools would never ever truly cleanse the Dark Side from these crystal caves, "…but someone else can clean it up, I should inform the council that it's my little going away present for them…"

"Is that wise? Are we simply going to burn all of our bridges?" Malak replied.

"It's too late, if they didn't expel us in the first place, they'll do it now," I said.

* * *

A part of me would always regret what I did to Malak, he was my best friend, for years he was my only friend. It had always been something of a battle between my need to honor our friendship and establish something of a control over him. I knew that he had always felt inadequate to me and though honestly he was, I tried not to make it obvious. I tried to balance our friendship through everything and it had worked until the events that took place and that eventually destroyed the planet of Telos. I had no qualms with the act itself, but it was the fact that he had so easily disobeyed my direct orders. I had intended on conquering Telos and using it as naval hub for the sector and the surrounding ones. I had ripped his jaw off of his skull with my bare hands for the show of defiance, but it was still the hardest thing that I ever had to do. I think it was safe to say that our friendship ended in orbit of the destroyed planet, and as much as I regretted the action, it had to be done.

I could still see the blood that covered the gauntlets that I wore – I still heard his wild, surprised and betrayed scream and the image of him on the deck, lying in a pool of his own blood would stay with me until the day that I died. The Sith in me was amused at worst and indifferent at best to his suffering, but the man who had been his friend that was still very much inside of me would always feel guilty. And as much as I didn't want to do it, I found myself whispering yet another silent for him. I knew that I caused him insurmountable pain, and I hoped he'd found peace.

And before I had the chance to dwell on that thought any longer, I closed my mind off and returned my attention to the present. It was unbecoming of a Lord of the Sith to think that way, I couldn't afford to think of Malak if I was always going to be torn. Part of me wanted him to burn for all eternity and the other wanted him to find the peace that he never had in his turbulent life. I was here and he was not, he was dead and I was very much alive and I needed to stay that way, dwelling on the painful memories of the past would not help. So I shook my head again in irritation and continued to monitor the perimeter good – it looked like they got the message.

"Why did you fall to the Dark Side of the Force?" She asked me softly, breaking the quietness that had fallen between us again and for the first time since I had met her, she actually had something that stumped me and because of that, I didn't respond at first. I was quickly and quietly debating on what I could respond with.

"You've studied the histories of the order Bastila – you know that no Jedi falls to the Dark Side without a reason," I replied absently, again I was weighing my words and my tone very carefully, "For whatever reason, be it power, blood lust or something else entirely – I had my reasons, and it was not for power or for blood and that has always been something that the Jedi never understood and never will understand…"

And it was true, the only being that really understood why I had done the things that I had did was Malak, and even he had forgotten that in the end. The Jedi and the Sith had a very narrow definition of right and wrong and they were polar opposites of each other. Neither side would be willing to admit that there was a gray area, and if my true beliefs were understood, I would either be incredibly weak or I would incredibly evil. I knew that and because of that, it seemed a futile exercise for me to debate my place in the galaxy and in the Force as a whole. If the Jedi offered the kind of power that I sought to use, then I would have remained a Jedi, but the Sith and the Dark Side only offered it and that's what defined my place. I was in a galaxy that was so fantastically biased and prejudiced against anyone who threatened their conception of right and wrong and I seemed to be the only one who realized this. It proved to be a hard position to take, but I had taken all of it, "…they can never have the chance to understand if you don't tell them."

"You're so very naïve my dear," I replied quietly, flashes of memories of the past few years and years before that, of moments when the Jedi seemed so ignorant and arrogant at the same time, "You live in your own little world, and you have your own idea of what is right and what is wrong, even if I told you my reasons you would form your own opinions and you will still fail to understand my reasoning. So believe me when I tell you this: I did "fall" for a reason and it was a rational one."

"Will you ever tell me?" She asked me, much to my surprise.

I lowered the rifled, turned and scowled down at her – I would never reveal any of my secrets to her until I knew she was not going to go back to the masters and tell all. I spoke to her in a tone that commanded respect and reeked of complete and total finality on this subject – and it would be, I would take pains to see that promise kept. The first part of her conversion was to make her see all things my way, "When you knell to me as my apprentice, and not a moment sooner my dear."


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5**

I really did not like to admit when I was wrong, I never had, but as the days went on and on, it was becoming harder and harder to deny a simple fact: Dantooine was having an effect on me. It wasn't driving me stark raving mad with boredom as I had originally thought it would, quite the opposite really, it was _calming_ me. I had been using the Force for as long as I could remember and in all of that time, I could never remember an instance when I purposely meditated to center myself and become calm. For as long as I could remember, I treated the tool of meditation as a means to an academic or a strategically planned end, but it hadn't been that way with my stay on this planet. I was finding peace when I meditated in the main courtyard of the enclave or on the gentle plains of Kahoonda, and it was unsettling to say the least. Even when I studied here as a Jedi, I had never found it all that peaceful, in fact I found it mind-numbingly boring, but as a Sith Lord, it was very different. This strange effect had driven me to the archives, to try and search for an answer, anything to explain why this was occurring. I needed a reason that was academic – something that wasn't the explanation Zhar was giving me. I had utterly refused to accept or believe that basking in the power of the light was redeeming me in some absurd way – the Force itself was not that black and white.

I had learned long ago that it was not and I knew better than to believe that just because some Jedi Master told me so, and when I pointed this out to Zhar, he politely asked me why and that had led to an entire philosophical debate. To say that I had wanted to debate him would be a lie – but to say that it hadn't been useful would also be a lie. I quickly and very purposely let it slip that I wasn't the conventional Sith Lord. I wanted him to know that I wasn't Malak, I did not believe that abject fear was the proper way to approach things. I truly believed that enslaving someone to follow you wasn't the right thing to do, you had to make them believe it, you had to convince them – and that fact alone made me unique among my historical predecessors. I couldn't use the Force to see if my words had the effect that I wished – but I had a strong suspicion that they had worked and that would prove useful in the future, an ally on the Jedi Council went a long way.

Reading each word of this particular document that I had selected, I stretched back in the chair and took a moment to look around the empty archives. Zhar had convinced Dorak to allow me private use of the Archives – and thankfully it had worked like a charm. I wouldn't be able to study with some pompous Jedi Master glaring at me and standing over my shoulder the entire time, I had to find an answer and a lecture wouldn't work. So when a chime on the locked door sounded, I did a double take and watched as it slid open to reveal _Bastila_. Sitting up straighter in the chair, I rested elbows on the table and steepled my fingers before putting a smirk on my face. It seemed my little Jedi Padawan was purposely seeking me out – perhaps she was not as resistant to me as she indignantly proclaimed to be. I watched as she reached over to the pad and reengaged the locking mechanism and set off in my direction, and that led to the obvious question.

"Correct me if I'm wrong, but when I was a student here, I wasn't allowed in the archives, they were restricted to masters – and you, my dear, are not a master," I said wryly as she came up to me and took the chair that was directly opposite me.

She rolled her eyes, "You are not a master either."

"I have the qualifications of one," I smiled, putting a touch of condescension into my voice – I knew this was just our banter, but I wanted her to know that I was superior, "As well as my significantly superior qualifications as Dark Lord…"

She snorted softly and shook her head, "Master Zhar asked me to come down here and help you – he granted me special dispensation to be in here as long as you are with me. He says that you are having something of an existential crisis, and for some reason, he seems to think that I can help you – so, can I help you today?"

I blinked for a moment, looking down at the document reader and then a smile came to my face before I shook my head, "I'm afraid that you don't possess the knowledge, the intellect, the skill, the philosophical openness or understanding to assist me my dear. But if you want help me, just sit there and look beautiful."

Her blush was my reward and when I chuckled at resumed my reading, I could feel her eyes study me carefully. I resisted the urge to smirk again, let her study me – let her be curious about me, all the better for me when she finally gave into me and became mine. But when a particular passage in the document, the journals of Master Nomi Sunrider that covered the engagement with Ulic Qel-Droma, caught my attention – I lowered my head even further and peered at the words. These were the personal logs of the Grand Master of the Jedi Order and if I was reading them correctly, it would appear that the ever exalted Master Sunrider had a romantic attachment to Qel-Droma. I almost wanted to laugh in triumph at the hypocrisy that the woman once drilled into me. In the year before the start of the war with the Mandalorians, Sunrider had called me back to Coruscant to constantly teach me in the mechanics of being a proper Jedi, and now it appeared that she herself had issues being a "proper" Jedi.

"What are you reading?" Bastila asked me quietly.

"The personal journals of Grand Master Sunrider," I answered her, not looking up.

I didn't need to see her face to know that she was surprised, "Y-you can do that?"

I looked up to her and smiled mischievously, "Master Sunrider is somewhat lax when it comes to upgrading the security around her personal database. Let's just say that I once grew good at slicing into places that people didn't want me to be."

She was looking at me with a mixture of respect for my accomplishment and the indignation over what I had done. Shaking my head and laughing quietly, I returned my attention back to the document and I became far more engrossed in it then I had before. I had just run into the passage that I had wanted to find and it was quite an interesting one. It was the one that covered Qel-Droma's redemption – and as I read through it a few more times my heart began to sink. After spending the day reading through the order's accounts of all known redeemed Jedi, they all came to a similar conclusion. It was something that I would never admit to – but it was something that I silently knew, the Light Side of the Force was drawing me in.

Slowly, but ever so surely – it would reverse the effects of the past twenty years.

And I would be cut off from everything that I had come to depend upon, my anger, my rage, my drive, my aggression – everything would be undone if I remained here any longer. Sitting there at the console, making a point of ignoring Bastila, I formulated three options in my head: fight through an entire enclave of Jedi and making my escape, increase my usage of the Force to channel my hate and aggression and kill something or a combination of all three. Tapping my fingers against the console, I snapped my eyes up to Bastila and glared at her, I knew that emotions were in full swing and at this point – I didn't care, "I bet you are enjoying this little Jedi, I bet you and your little friends are quite amused to have me living among you, like a restrained beast, a circus animal that does tricks to entertain."

She blinked in confusion and I sneered at her, "You are so very lucky that you are useful to me my dear, if there wasn't a wonderfully infinite amount of power lying dormant under all of that ineptitude and mediocrity, I would crush your throat."

"A-are you alright?" She was looking at me obvious fear from my dark words.

Letting out a shuttering breath, I shook my head and stood up – I needed to unleash this anger, far from the Jedi, "No – I need to calm myself if I'm going to make for civilized company – I think I'll take a walk on the plains and meditate."

She blinked at me again – damn her idiocy, "This late at night?!"

"I've survived worse," I snapped at her, really wanting to get out of there – but then a thought occurred to me and I reluctantly smirked, "You sound like you care."

She scowled at me, "I don't care about you."

I snorted stood up and straightened out the accursed and very uncomfortable tunic they gave me, "Try not to fall down and smack your head on the ground Bastila."

* * *

It was approaching a standard month since I was captured by the Jedi and this was the result – I wasn't threatening them with a very painful death at every turn like they expected, and I wasn't refusing to talk. In fact, I would even admit that I had been more than friendly with most of them. However, did they ever wonder why that was? Did they understand that my patience was a fleeting thing and that I needed to blow off steam every now and then? Apparently they hadn't and that's why I had taken to these nighttime "walks" to calm myself. I knew that eventually I would have to stop this, eventually one of those blasted fools would be brave enough to follow me and they would see what I did when they all slept. But for now, now when I was several kilometers away from the enclave and way from the oppressive eyes of the Jedi Masters, I could exercise my emotions and my power.

Crouching behind a rock, I held the neural disruptor in my right hand and planned my attack – anything to quell the angry beast that roared in my chest. It demanded blood, it demanded that I lash out and destroy these fools and it demanded that I utterly destroy the Jedi while I had the chance. But I had to suppress that last one, there would come a time and a place for that and I would not do it until the time was right. So with every ounce of willpower I had, I quashed the last urge and redirected all of myself into the task of destroying these men. It wasn't like anyone was going to miss them anyway, a whole camp of Mandalorian mercenaries that terrorized the settlers? The only thing that people would be shocked over was the brutality of their deaths. They were the perfect targets, Mercenaries always were.

There were five of them, all of them Mandalorians – two of them were curled up out of their armor and sleeping in their rolls. Three of them were sitting around a campfire, their helmets off, drinking obviously and the pathetic fools were singing… and they were singing battle songs in Mandoa. I had sliced through enough Mandalorians in my time to know the language – and to this day, the very sound of it made long standing hatred burn into me. The Mandalorians were arrogant, sanctimonious killers and just like then, I had no qualms of carving them up and leaving them to be gnawed on by the Kath Hounds. Blind killing had its cruel moments to be sure, but I had seen even crueler things from these beings. I had seen them put blaster bolts in the heads of children, elderly people and pregnant women for simply denying them anything. Some of them were useful, some of them even had redeeming qualities, but regardless of those few people, it was a standing future plan within my empire that when I finished off the Republic and the Jedi – I would be turning my attention to the remnants of the Mandalorian clans.

My weapons researchers were working on various, slow and very painful methods of remedying a mistake that I made during my war with the Mandalorians. Years ago I had the chance of annihilating the clans and leveling the Mandalore System – Malachor V had pretty much decimated them as a major galactic power. But the only thing that held me back at that point, once I had already begun to embrace the power of the Dark Side, was the fact that the Republic was not strong enough to do the job. The political side of things was inconsequential at the time, the public was for a general occupation of Mandalore – we just didn't have the numbers or the resources. But now I did – and this time, I wouldn't just occupy it – I would destroy it. There were two divisions of weapons researchers working towards that goal, biological and conventional weapon researchers, I would ultimately unleash both.

My bitterness and resentment of the foolish race was strong – but when I let my eyes drift over one of them, I discovered something most useful and my inner-thoughts evaporated. That was a lightsaber on his belt and I felt almost giddy with anticipation – it had been quite a while since I had held one in my hands and even thought it was most definitely a Jedi's weapon, it would still feel the same and it would still kill the same. Smirking, I stretched out with the Force and telekinetically ripped it from the fool's belt, to them it would have simply disappeared into the dark and because my position wasn't immediately given away, I'd have fun first.

"Who is there? Who are you? Show yourself!" One of them shouted in Mandoa.

I smiled mischievously, sinking down to my knees, under the assumption that they wouldn't move – I would be safe behind the rock outcropping. Using the Force, I stretched out and touched their minds – and exerting a fair amount of Force, I penetrated their minds and spoke to them. Their fear was palpable and delicious.

"_I am death…_" My voice whispered menacingly in their minds.

* * *

**Authors Notes: I'm not dead! I am quite alive, but I've been very busy - on top of my life, I have three other stories to be concerned about and another on the way. If I die, then someone will let you know - if the story goes on hiatus, I'll let you know, if I'm unable to continue for whatever reason, I'll let you know. If I don't update for a month, it's usually because I have other matters to attend to. So unless I tell you otherwise, I'm still actively involved in this story - you might just have to wait :) This goes out to my ****Parentages readers too.**

**I hope you liked it! **


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